As I recall, Paul, that was arguably one of the most over-hyped and hysterical bits of reporting ever witnessed in this country. A few blurry frames of what was, in all likelihood, a shrimp trawler. The hysteria reached its maximum when they kept showing a few frames of the "UFO's impossible manoever", when in reality it was a result of camera shake. Similarly, the mysterious shape changing was the result of the photographer trying to focus (and failing) on what was actually a very bright and unknown point of light out in the darkness. Since it was impossible at the time to distinguish where the sky ended and the earth began, I would suggest that they simply had no clue what they were seeing, filmed it to the best of their ability, and the knee-jerk TVNZ media machine of the time took it and ran with it.

Quite frankly, to nearly everyone around at the time, it was a bit of a joke.

PS - why don't you contact those papers yourself and get the stuff first hand from the archives?

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